The US Patent office has cancelled the various trademarks owned by the NFL team, the term redskins has been deemed offensive to native Americans. This naming battle has been going on for years. However this is the first time that anything pseudo serious has transpired. The bigger question is.. so who cares?

Well no doubt the team owners are a little miffed, but possibly the big loser in this Political Correctness battle is the NFL and licensed merchandising agreements. The trademarks being invalidated means that there is no recourse against companies using the various trademarks on shirts, caps, coffee mugs, condoms, or whatever. Just think of the opportunity for some enterprising soul to market ‘pre lubed Redskins’. I could write the advertising campaign right now. “concussion proof, we protect the head that matters”.

What bothers me most is how Political Correctness has come to rule our lives. I have no basic problem with the concept, just the often arbitrary way it is adopted. Martha Stewart got in a pile of trouble for using the ‘N’ word. Yet it is in common use in Rap, and I often hear it from the mouths of parents and their young children. Bottom line is that it is just fine for one ethnic group to use it as a term of endearment, but it is unacceptable for the white population to use it at all.

On the TV we have the BET channel (Black Entertainment), I have no issue with it, these days there is mostly a channel for everything, but I imagine that should someone try and launch WET (White Entertainment) the reaction would be brutal.

It is time that we all agree on some ground rules and create a level playing field.

What bothers me is that the Redskins have been around for a very long time, they have a brand, OK they are not a top team, but no harm is inferred by their name.

Take a look at other team names, NFL, NBA, NHL, etc, there are lots of names that one group or another could take offense at. This trademark removal is pure bunk.

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